In defense of his tour and new album, George Harrison has
argued that "If you don't expect anything, life is one big
bonus. But when you expect anything, then you can be let
down." So expect nothing - is that the moral of a shriveled
career?

Given Harrison's appearance at his recent concerts, the
audience could be forgiven its expectations. Here was the first
major American tour by an ex-Beatle; and here was Harrison
himself, with his shag-blown hair and bell bottoms billowing,
looking like a picture-perfect Beatle. It was only natural to
imagine the guitarist ten years younger, bobbing with John, Paul
and Ringo, smiling at the crowds and drinking in their adoration.

But Harrison himself wants to be taken as a no-time
Beatle, sometime rock star, and full-time guru - to an audience
too often ungrateful for the wisdom he finds hard won. A creature
of the material world, he lectures us to aim our sights beyond
it. He has cast himself in the role of selfless minister, using
the media to spread a gospel of good will and universal love.

The hardening of his religious attitudes has made it harder
for him to accept his own past. While he tries to transcend his
association with the Beatles, he finds himself hampered by his
own limitations. It just may be that George Harrison was never
cut out to be a solo artist.

He was, after all, only a member of the most illustrious group
in rock history. The Beatles represented, among many other
things, individual limitations overcome, the perfection of
interaction. Onstage and in the studio together, they were always
something more than particular musicians playing their particular
songs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr fashioned something
infinitely more complex and provocative than that: a total sound,
a style, an image, a fashion, ultimately a scene, a myth, a way
of life. And they did it collectively, each member contributing,
quite literally, his own allotted part.

In that setting, George Harrison performed brilliantly. He had
a knack for fills, riffs, even writing Beatles tunes. Harrison's
early songs for the group - "Don't Bother Me,"
"You Like Me Too Much," "I Need You,"
"Think for Yourself," "If I Needed
Someone"—not only compare favorably with
Lennon/McCartney's best: They also sound like Lennon/McCartney's
best.

Harrison grew within and through the Beatles, becoming the
transcendental connection to the biggest thing since Jesus
Christ. But while Harrison, unlike the other Beatles, never
abandoned his interest in mysticism, his religiosity always held
a singular significance within the group. As a Beatle, Harrison's
devoutness represented the possibility of transcendent
enlightenment - but not to the exclusion of other forms of
experience.

Yet, as Harrison pointedly titled his first post-Beatles LP,
all things must pass, even the charm of innocence. When the
Beatles finally disbanded, Harrison was left alone with Krishna,
his share in a memory, a repertoire of songs (including
"Something," one of the finest - and most popular -
Beatles ballads), and last but not least, considerable support
and good will to build a solo career upon.

Harrison of course was not without his own character, even
within the Beatles. By the time of the collapse, he could trade
on two distinguishing marks: his slide-guitar technique, which
added a glistening sheen to his playing, and his interest in
Indian culture, which supplied him with a ready-made and, for a
rock star, quite distinctive personality. Thanks to the Beatles'
prestige, he could pose as pop's elder avatar; by staging such affaires
as the Concert for Bangladesh, he soon established himself as a
conscience for the "youth culture."

Stripped of the Beatles' company, however, Harrison's
weaknesses as a musician have gradually surfaced. His voice has
always been dogged by a limited range and poor intonation, just
as his guitar playing, adequate for fills within precise
arrangements, has always been rudimentary and even graceless in
an affecting sort of way. Harrison's tunes are often formulaic,
his melodic talent brittle. Under the pressure of composing
enough new material to sustain a solo career, his songs have
become as predictable as his spiritual preoccupations.

And those preoccupations, untempered by other concerns, have
become insufferable. No longer primarily a private avocation,
Harrison's quest for illumination populates his lyrics with
sermons and awkward mea culpas: "Since I stepped out of the
womb/I've been a cool jerk/Looking for the source/I'm a dark
horse." His religiosity, once a spacey bauble within the
Beatles' panoply, has come to resemble the obsessiveness of a
zealot

At first, Harrison carefully spotted his solo talent, securing
the best producers and bands a pop musician could hope to
attract. With Phil Spector's considerable help, he produced All
Things Must Pass, filled with songs whose kinetic veneer
spoke volumes more about rock transcendence than all of
Harrison's earnest lyrics combined. "My Sweet Lord,"
potentially a mind-numbing din of the first order, became instead
a hypnotic chant lofted by Spector's gossamer mix, sheets of
acoustic guitars, a massed chorus and Harrison's own signature,
his slide guitar.

While Living in the Material World parceled out more of
the same, the formula already showed strains. Harrison continued
to snake his guitar through inspirational verse, but his
conceits, despite airtight musical support, were beginning to
ring hollow: In rock & roll, a little piety goes a long way.

Yet it is only in the wake of his disastrous tour and Dark
Horse, his disastrous album, that George Harrison finally
stands naked. For his new record, Harrison hired a band of merely
competent studio pros, saddled himself with a passel of preachy
lyrics and then cut the album hoarse, his voice whining
offensively, turning each idiot phrase into a prickly barb.
Harrison's modest skills suddenly dwindle, overshadowed by the
misplaced pride that permitted him to release such a shoddy piece
of work.

But then Harrison's life, so he claimed on his recent tour, is
out of his control: "I believe in God and He is the supreme
controller even down to the rehearsals ... I mean, if it's going
this well, as I feel, with no voice, I can't wait to have a
voice!" If Dark Horse sounds hoarse, "It's more
like I am right at this minute." And that makes it okay.

The nadir of the album is reached when Patti Harrison,
George's estranged wife, joins her current lover, Eric Clapton,
for a spirited trio rendition of the Everly Brothers' old
"Bye Bye Love." It seems a sick man's idea of a joke.
Yet "So Sad," one of the album's few resonant moments,
probably tells the truth:

Of the dream we once held

Now it's got to be shelved

It's too late to make a new start

And he feels so alone

With no love of his own

So sad, so bad, so sad, so bad.

On Dark Horse, such self-pity is eventually resolved in
hosannas to Maya Love, (which, honestly now, makes a pretty poor
substitute for the mortal thing). The album is fleshed out with a
banal instrumental, "Hari's on Tour (Express)," a raspy
stab at "Auld Lang Syne" '74 ("Ding Dong; Ding
Dong /Ring out the false/ Ring in the true") and the title
track which, thanks to Harrison's no-voice and stilted lyrics,
quite fails to evoke the self-confident master of "My Sweet
Lord" or even "Living in the Material World."

But Dark Horse is ultimately something more than an
embarrassingly bad record. It is also the chronicle of a
performer out of his element, working to deadline, enfeebling his
overtaxed talents by a rush to deliver new "LP
product," rehearse a band and assemble a cross-country tour,
all within three weeks.

How long will his fans continue to tolerate such mediocrity?
Harrison himself, affecting the stance of the misunderstood
artist, claims not to care: "I don't give a shit, it doesn't
matter to me, but I'm going to do what I feel within
myself." His belligerence, however, reveals a fundamental
insecurity. In plain point of fact, George Harrison has never
been a great artist, as he himself must know. Given his current
mood, the question becomes whether he will ever again be a
competent entertainer.